Ghost Story
by Varia Lectio
Summary: On Halloween night on a deserted highway, a lone driver comes face to face with a different sort of ghostan exile from an Age long gone...


Ghost Story

Summary: In the modern age, a lone driver on a deserted, 'haunted' highway comes face-to-face with a different sort of ghost. Silm-fic, though it may not seem so at first. . .

Rating: PG, for very mild, brief language.

Betaing thanks goes to Araniell.

The highway was long and dark, and she was the only driver on it.

She hadn't seen another driver's headlights for... was it twenty minutes? Thirty? No one wanted to be on the highway at this hour, on this day. It was Hallowe'en, and, as a glance at her digital clock told her, close to midnight.

She kept her eyes on the broad black ribbon of road, careful not to let herself fall asleep or stray off onto the shoulder. _That's all I would need tonight, to get stuck on the 'Haunted Highway',_ she thought wryly, _Or to get wrecked here myself. _

The highway had been 'haunted' for a long time-- she wasn't sure when or how the legends had started, but the grisly rumors of ghosts wandering the blacktop had only been strengthened when two teenage girls had been killed while hitchhiking, back in the '70s... or was it the '60s? She couldn't remember precisely. Nor could she remember how the girls themselves had died; had it been murder, or an accident?

As with most urban legends, the precise details did not seem to matter: all that mattered was that the highway was believed to be haunted by the restless spirits of the two girls. They had been 'sighted' numerous times... twin apparitions, smiling at passersby, holding their hands out with thumbs extended, asking those who stopped for them if they could just get a ride... just a short drive to take them home, please?

Despite herself, goosebumps ran up her arms, and she shuddered a little. She wasn't sure she believed in ghosts asking for rides (if they were ethereal, why didn't they just waft to wherever they wanted to go?), but she couldn't deny that the stories had a certain power over the imagination...a life of their own, perhaps--

Suddenly, something tall and pale loomed up in her headlights-- right in front of her! She gasped; her foot darted for the brake, and the car jolted to a squealing stop.

The person who had wandered out in front of her crouched on the cold blacktop, blinking in the glare of her headlights like a stranded deer.

For a moment, what she felt wasn't fear, but rage. Rolling down her window, she screamed, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Ex--excuse me?" the person--no, man--said shakily, standing up a bit straighter and tucking a strand of very long hair behind an ear.

"You just nearly got flattened by me, you frickin' idiot! What do you think you're doing out here, anyway?" _Don't you even know the highway's haunted?_ her mind added shrilly, though whether it was meant for him or for her was debatable.

The man blinked sadly at her. His face fell. "I... I'm sorry for that. I'm afraid that I got just a little bit lost. You see, I'm trying to find the seashore. I went away from it for a little while." He held up his hands beseechingly, but did not approach her car. "Please, could you be so kind as to give me a ride? I should hate to walk around out here all alone."

The goosebumps were back, and in full force. Was he a ghost or a highway vagrant? Would he attack her, if she did show him a little kindness by letting him into the car? Her hands were slick with sweat.

Uncannily, he seemed to sense her unease. "Please, m'lady, I'm no ghost of some slain hitchhiker," he said gently. "Nor am I a madman who would harm you. I have no weapons... and I have no intentions of harming anyone. All I need is a ride to the sea."

She stared at him for a long, long moment...then, unexpectedly to either herself or the stranger, she burst into laughter.

"'M'lady?' Who speaks like that anymore, anyway?" she asked. He smiled nervously and sketched a little bow. "Well, you're polite, whoever you are. What's your name? If I'm going to give you a ride, I need your name."

For a moment, his warm smile faltered. "I'm--I'm afraid I can't tell you..."

She hesitated, with a finger resting on the auto-lock button for the doors. She was beginning to wonder again if he was really as safe as he seemed at first glance. "You can't tell me?"

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, and with a flash of shocked revulsion, she saw that the skin of his palms was slick and taut with scar tissue. It looked as though his hands had been badly burned.

She forced herself to stop staring at his hands as he spoke again. "Well, you see, I'm afraid that I can't _remember_ my name...it's been so long since someone has talked to me in the language of my birth..."

She nodded. _Well, that's one explanation._ "English isn't the first language of a lot of people. I understand."

He smiled, and now the expression was more cautious somehow. "Yes--it's been a long time since I last heard a native speaker of my mother tongue. It's become something of a dead language, I fear." Slowly he lowered his mutilated hands, keeping them at his sides.

"I'm sorry about that." The breeze picked up, sweeping across the bare asphalt; it was cold outside and getting colder. "But, you know--" she laughed nervously-- "everything dies and fades away, sooner or later."

He did not speak for a time; he just stood there looking so unutterably sad and lost that she soon regretted her words, not now because of fear over what he might do or how he might react, but because what she had said seemed to remind him of some bitter lesson in his own life--some event so terrible, so unalterable, that it had marred his soul forever, just as his hands were so horribly scarred.

After a moment, she said, hating the silence, "I'm sorry if I offended you, sir. I meant no disrespect."

He smiled at her, and in that expression there was the same deep sorrow, but she found that she was no longer afraid of him. She knew that he would not harm her, not in any way. "I do remember one thing," he said, and with those words there was a light in his eyes like a flame being kindled, "and it is this: that my father was a great man."

She laughed; why, she couldn't tell. Delight, perhaps? Certainly it was not in mockery of him. "Just that?"

"Just that." He smiled, and she found herself smiling back. He was a very handsome (young? she found she couldn't really tell how old he was) man. "He--made things. Things of great beauty, and wonder." He sighed, and looked down at the asphalt beneath his tattered, stained sneakers. "But now none of those things are in the world anymore."

Despite her earlier suspicions, she found that she couldn't just leave him to wander the highway for the rest of the night. _What if he gets hit by another driver? Couldn't let that happen._

With a decisive click, she unlocked the car doors, and began to roll up the window. "Get inside, but remember! Keep your hands to yourself back there."

"Yes, ma'am," he said as he opened the door and clambered in. He was a very tall man--well over six feet, and closer to seven, in fact. She watched him in the rear-view mirror as he made himself comfortable, and saw that the backs of his hands were as severely scarred as his palms--mottled pinkish-white, pitted and distorted. As he fumbled with the straps of the seatbelt, she realized that some of his fingers must be fused together.

Horror and pity filled her. _What caused those hideous scars?_ The thought of the pain the initial wounds must have inflicted on him chilled her far more than the wind had.

He grumbled incoherently at the seatbelt's buckle, trying to make it fit, until finally she said, "Look--don't worry about that thing. I doubt a cop will catch us, anyway. I don't think there's anyone left out here."

He looked up at her with concern. "But if we should--"

"Get in an accident? Don't worry. I'll try not to run into any more mysterious pedestrians." He laughed at that, and she laughed with him. "Ready? I'm gonna start us moving."

He nodded, looking happy (if rather cramped in the confines of the back seat), and she tapped the gas pedal. The car started forward smoothly, its headlights pointing the way.

Her mind slid into its familiar patterns as the miles rolled on behind them. "So, where did you say you wanted to go again?"

He didn't hesitate. "The sea."

"You mean a seaside motel, or a town by the sea?"

In her rear-view, there was a glimpse of long hair falling across his chest as the stranger shook his head in the negative. "No, just the seashore. Really. That's all I want, or need."

Though she wasn't exactly afraid of him, she wondered, not for the first time, if he was entirely mentally stable. "You sure? You don't want food, or a bed to sleep in? 'Cause, no offense, buddy, but you look like you could use both of 'em."

He smiled. "Thank you for your concern, but the sea is all I require." Before her next thoughts could reach her tongue, he added smoothly, "And I'm not going to harm myself, if that's what you're thinking. Far from it. Trust me."

And for some reason that she could not explain or define, she believed him.

For nearly an hour, they rode on in silence, until her guest began to sing. His voice was so soft that she almost didn't notice it at first, thinking, perhaps, that it was merely the wind, but eventually she realized that it was him.

His voice grew stronger as he apparently realized that she wasn't going to try to shut him up, and as she really listened to the song she realized that it was in no language that she understood. Yet, as the song progressed she found that she _could_ understand it, after a fashion; it told of love and war and death and regrets. Terrible betrayals, perpetuated again and again, and the endless suffering of one who wished for death because of his crimes, but who could not, in the end, give up his life and face whatever was to come. So all he could do now was sing.

Time and the miles of the highway outside the car seemed to flow past her senses like water parting against the prow of a boat, disappearing into the wake of past hours. Before she even realized it, the sky was beginning to lighten, and there was the sound of the waves mingling with the stranger's voice.

_He's been singing for hours. Without stopping once,_ she finally realized. The thought made her hands feel clammy and cold, yet his voice was as clear and pure as when he had begun.

The highway was now long gone behind them; she had turned off on a smaller, narrower road some time ago, and had hardly even realized it. That, too, had dwindled eventually, turning off onto a gravel road, which had, in time, dwindled as well.

Before them now there was nothing but the shore and the sea. The last road, for someone who only wanted to find their home once again.

As she shut off the ignition, the song faded, and finally stopped.

She turned in her seat and stared at him for a few silent minutes, mouth open with astonishment--or perhaps bone-deep weariness. Exhaustion was only just now hitting her--it was as if the song itself had kept her going, kept her focused, kept her alert and awake. Now its (magic?) had dimmed, but through her exhaustion she seemed to see the stranger for what he really was.

He stared back at her for a moment, grey eyes as bright and piercing as the lights of ancient stars. The subtly pointed tips of his ears were a translucent pink as the rays of the morning sun touched them just so. "Thank you so much," he whispered, then reached out with a single withered hand. He touched her shoulder gently with stiff, swollen fingers, and she did not feel repulsed at all.

Then with a movement so sudden she nearly jumped out of her seat, he flung open the door and raced for the sea, sand flying up from beneath his ragged sneakers, arms spread wide. He cried out in that same strange tongue, his voice so wildly joyous that she shivered and nearly wept to hear him. And then a far stranger thing than everything that had yet occurred to her happened, so that her wondering eyes could hardly believe what they saw--

The rays of the morning sun struck him as he ran, and they seemed to pass _through_ him. His dirty and disheveled flannel shirt, torn jeans, and no-longer-white sneakers seemed to fade away-- in their place were the robes and fine apparel of a prince. Robes so worn by time that they had faded; clothing a body so wearied by time that it, too, had faded. . .

When he had waded out chest-deep into the ocean, she no longer saw the solid physical form of a man, but only a faded outline, burning with incandescent light as if lit with an inner fire. "I have repented!" he shouted, and though his words were still in that strange tongue, somehow she understood them. "I have repented of the Oath, and cast my father's Silmaril into the Sea! Would that I could cast my guilt and shame therein, also! Have mercy, O Eru Iluvatar! Have mercy on your child, who went astray in his folly!" His voice broke, torn with grief. "Make a way-- one last road on this bent world-- for me, that I might rest at last."

Slowly but surely, as if in answer to his plea, there came a glimmering from the distant horizon, a light ascending. And then there was the greatest wonder of all for her watching mortal eyes-- a great ship of light, translucent and glimmering, with sweet songs echoing from it.

When it reached the shore, it did not drop anchor, nor did it run aground on the sands. Instead, it seemed almost to merge with the shore, merge with the waters. It was part of them, and yet somehow separate. Otherworldly; a mist from some far distant shore that she had never seen.

_A ghost ship._

"The last ship," she heard him whisper. "The very last. Now I shall face what must be. Thank you." She felt fairly certain that the last words of gratitude had not been to her.

He seemed to board-- or merge-- with the ship of light, and then the vessel turned and sailed away, into the West. Finally it was so far away that its radiance dimmed and at least disappeared, and the new day seemed just a bit darker because of it.

Alone, she sat there for a long, long time in utter silence, tears rolling down her cheeks, and just as with her trust in him, she could not have said why it had affected her so. The echoes of his song resonated in her soul still-- speaking of sorrow and loss, but now, somehow, of reconciliation and reunion as well.

She knew that the song would be with her until the day she died. Perhaps she would hear it even more clearly then.

At last, with shaking fingers, she started the motor again, and placed her hands on the steering wheel. Should she tell anyone of what she'd seen? Could she, even?

Finally she whispered, "No, I can't. Because no one believes in his sort of ghosts anymore."

Sand sputtered under the car's wheels as she backed up and left, heading for a different road than his.

The End.

Author's notes: My inspiration for this piece comes from several sources; one, a very, very good fic about Maglor in the modern world, where Galadriel herself comes back on an Elven ship to get him. It was a very good story; unfortunately I do not have the link for it, nor do I remember the title. But it was something of an inspiration for this piece.

Also, there's the whole realm of 'hitchhiker ghost' stories that are a big part of urban legend folklore. My thoughts on combining the tragedy of Maglor and modern legends came from an evening drive home with my family. My father began talking about ghost stories of teenage girls getting rides from unwary passerby--only to vanish as their 'stop' came up! It was as spooky a subject as it was entertaining, and so that is where and why the 'hitchhiking' and 'haunted highway' elements of "Ghost Story" come into play.

Also, readers may be wondering why Maglor's body seems to disappear when the light touches it. This comes from a theory I have read on Elven bodies eventually 'fading'-- that is, as they become more and more weary of life and the physical world, their very bodies become more and more ethereal. I imagine that with the pain and isolation Maglor has endured-- for millennia, no less!-- he would be about worn thin; 'like butter scraped over too much bread'.

Varia Lectio.


End file.
